CHAPTER XLVI
CRAIG STRIKES
Sevier had stepped back as they entered. He had not been startled at the ambush; he had gone past surprises. He was conscious only of a cold preparedness and a kind of dull wonder as to the form of their errand. The purpose in Craig's face left no cause for any speculation as to their intent. He looked at the other's two companions, perfect types of the "heeler," burly and with brutally-cunning features, that wore now a gloze of satisfaction in the work that was forward. They were not in uniform—it was not an arrest, then. What did Craig intend to do? He turned, set his hat on the hall table and passed into the sitting-room. Craig followed him. Harry now saw that he carried a compact bundle under his arm. He snapped the cord and disclosed a costume—jacket and trousers of black and yellow-grey stripes and a flat, peaked cap of dingy canvas. Around one arm of the jacket was a leathern band which bore a metal number—239!
"Put them on," commanded Craig shortly. "Over what you are wearing. They'll be large enough."
A painful mist was before Harry's eyes. He understood. Craig meant to give him up stamped with the old felon character, clothed in the unmistakable livery of the convict! Well, if not to-night, to-morrow. What did it matter?
As he drew on the loathsome garments, buttoning the jacket close up to his chin, their very touch seemed to cling insupportably to his flesh. The smell of the coarse fulled cloth in his nostrils gave him a qualm as of actual physical sickness, and the feel of the canvas cap across his forehead burned it like a brand.
Craig had taken from his pocket a black cloth mask. "Now this," he said. "I believe you wore one in your last burglary," he added with cold malevolence. "I am disposed to miss no realistic touch, believe me."
Harry put on the mask, whose lower hem fell below his beard. Through its eye-holes he looked evenly at the sneering, implacable face opposite. A peculiar apathy had come to him. The wide humiliation—even the cheap and ghastly sensationalism of the mask did not touch him. Like the hapless voyageur caught in the rapids above the great falls, he was watching the nearing brink with a kind of fascination and with the roar of the cataract in his ears.
One of the men had opened a window to peer down into the street. "All clear," he announced briefly, and Craig went to the hall and opened the door.
A monster limousine with curtains drawn waited at the curb, and on the front seat sat a figure at whose pallid face and red-rimmed eyes Harry gazed without a start but with a strange sensation of fitness. Here indeed was the real thief who had shot Craig, but leagued now with his enemy to his undoing!
Sitting in the dark interior, as the car sped along with its silent company, Harry remembered another ride of two years before, when he had flung through the night flying from his own conscience, incarnate in the figure that now rode beside the chauffeur. Was he never to lay that old ghost? He noted dully that the streets were jostling with eager throngs which made compact eddies here and there before some newspaper bulletin-board or flaring club-window which displayed the reports of the voting, as, township by township, county by county, the tally came in. On one the legend was being posted, "Sevier Leads," and a muffled cheer was wafted after. He shut his eyes. Almost he could have thought himself in the grip of some outré, high-coloured dream—but he knew that it was no dream.
The limousine slowed and stopped. Harry turned his head as the door opened; they were at the gate of Midfields.
As they neared the upper end of the drive, a man rose from the steps and came toward them. It was Lawrence Treadwell. He started as if he had been stung at sight of the masked and striped figure between its stolid escort. He turned on Craig, his eyes blazing with amazement and anger.
"My God!" he cried. "You haven't dared—but this is infamous. It's an outrage! You—"
"Keep your place!" ground Craig. "I tell you I know what I'm doing!"
"It's my private opinion you're as crazy as a March hare," retorted the other, "but if you are right, I'll have nothing to do with it, do you understand? Nothing! I don't care what your damned evidence is!"
Craig turned his back on him and led the way up the steps, and after an instant's hesitation Treadwell followed. Through an open window Harry glimpsed the interior of the east room, dismantled now for the evening's strenuous occupation, where several masculine figures were grouped about a table, excitedly working over charts, and he could hear the irritant buzz of the telephone as it signalled the bulletins that were beginning now to pour into the busy hotel suite at the other end of the wire. Craig did not ring at the big door but led the way along the porch to a French-window, of the library, which stood ajar. He peered into it, then with an exclamation of satisfaction motioned the two attendants back, said a low word to Paddy the Brick at his heels, and flung the window open.
Sevier entered, Craig and his stool-pigeon next. Treadwell followed and drew the window to behind him.